Psychological Explanations of Schizophrenia Flashcards
(21 cards)
Q: What is dysfunctional thought processing?
A: Abnormal information processing that leads to undesirable consequences, such as symptoms of schizophrenia.
Q: What is family dysfunction in the context of schizophrenia?
A: Abnormal family processes like poor communication, cold parenting, and high levels of expressed emotion, which may contribute to schizophrenia.
Q: What are cognitive explanations in psychology?
A: Explanations focusing on mental processes such as thinking, language, and attention.
Q: What are the two main psychological explanations for schizophrenia?
A: 1. Family environment (e.g. dysfunctional upbringing)
2. Abnormal cognition (e.g. faulty thinking processes)
Q: How does a schizophrenogenic mother lead to schizophrenia?
A: It causes distrust, which can develop into paranoid delusions and ultimately schizophrenia.
Q: What did Fromm-Reichmann propose about the cause of schizophrenia?
A: The schizophrenogenic mother – cold, rejecting, and controlling, creating a climate of tension and secrecy.
Q: What is the double-bind theory of schizophrenia?
A: Children receive mixed messages in communication, leading to confusion and an inability to express feelings or seek clarification.
Q: How do mixed messages contribute to schizophrenia symptoms?
A: They make the child interpret the world as dangerous and confusing, leading to disorganised thinking and paranoid delusions.
Q: What did Bateson clarify about double-bind theory?
A: It is not the sole cause of schizophrenia, but a risk factor among others.
Q: What is expressed emotion in schizophrenia?
A: The level of negative emotion shown by carers, including criticism, hostility, and emotional over-involvement.
Q: How does high EE affect schizophrenia?
A: It increases stress, possibly triggering onset or causing relapse in vulnerable individuals.
Q: How does high EE affect recovery and treatment?
A: Patients may be less likely to comply with medication or therapy, increasing the chance of relapse.
Q: How are brain areas linked to cognitive symptoms in schizophrenia?
Reduced processing in:
Ventral striatum → linked to negative symptoms
Temporal & cingulate gyri → linked to hallucinations
What do cognitive explanations focus on?
Abnormal mental processes and information processing in schizophrenia.
What are the two dysfunctional thought processes Frith proposed?
- Metarepresentation
- Central control
What is metarepresentation?
The cognitive ability to understand one’s own and others’ thoughts and intentions.
How does dysfunction in metarepresentation cause symptoms?
Leads to hallucinations and thought insertion, as patients cannot distinguish between their own thoughts and others’.
What is central control?
The ability to suppress automatic responses while performing deliberate actions.
What happens when central control is dysfunctional?
Results in disorganised speech and thought disorder (e.g. derailment, going off-topic).
What test is used to assess central control?
The Stroop Test, which measures the ability to suppress reading the word to identify the ink colour.
AO3 psychological explanations of schizophrenia
+There is evidence supporting the idea that dysfunctional thought processes are implicated in the
development of schizophrenia, and that faulty central control skills may be responsible for some SZ
symptoms, as demonstrated by Stirling et al (2006). The researchers found that SZ sufferers made
significantly more mistakes and twice as long to complete the task, compared to a healthy
neurotypical control group. However, it should be emphasised that dysfunctional thought processing
can only offer explanations for the indirect, proximal causes of SZ, and not the distal causes,
meaning that such theories can explain the symptoms but not the origin of SZ. This limits the utility
of psychological explanations for schizophrenia.
— A comparison can be made between biological and psychological explanations for SZ. A significant
weakness of psychological explanations for SZ is that they do not accommodate for biological
factors. Since such biological factors can explain the distal origins of schizophrenia (i.e. in terms of
dopamine levels in the brain, candidate genes and patterns of activity coinciding with symptoms/
neural correlates), this suggests that psychological explanations would best be reserved for the
proximal causes of SZ, as these causes are more likely to be most affected by psychological factors.
— A second major weakness would be the lack of support for family-based explanations. The idea of the schizophrenogenic mother was based upon historical observations of families with SZ members, where observers would be searching for ‘crazy-making characteristics’ (Harrington, 2012) which is hardly an objective and reliable indicator of the likelihood of developing SZ. Psychological explanations also place an increasing amount of blame on the families and caregivers of patients with SZ, as opposed to accommodating for the possibility of a genetic/biological predisposition. For example, caregivers/ parents are further hurt when they are forced to accept responsibility for their patient’s schizophrenia, which is likely to have already upset family life and relationships through the
development of severe and intrusive negative and positive symptoms. This may explain the sudden popularity of community care in the 1980s, which could have marked parents refusing to take responsibility for their child’s condition, seeing as they are so dedicated to their care.
